Shaakuntalam Review: Too Much CGI

The love story of Shakuntala and Dushyant is so familiar, from textbooks, comics, stage and screen versions, that it has become part of our cultural DNA.
If a film-maker thinks he can make it his own by producing a 3D version with excessive CGI, he achieves nothing but overkill, notes Deepa Gahlot.

The promos give some indication of what to expect -- a Baahubali-ised version of the Kalidasa epic -- but still, the two-and-a-half hour visual and aural punishment inflicted by Gunasekhar's Shaakuntalam leaves the viewer gobsmacked.

The love story of Shakuntala and Dushyant is so familiar, from textbooks, comics, stage and screen versions, that it has become part of our cultural DNA.

If a film-maker thinks he can make it his own by producing a 3D version with excessive CGI, he achieves nothing but overkill.

After prefixing his name to the title, Gunasekhar does not reinterpret the classic, if that were even possible; it appears he just went along with the current trend of turning everything into a spectacle.

Gunashekar has made some award-winning Telugu films in the past, but if he aspires to be another Rajamouli, he has some way to go.

Shakuntala (Samantha Ruth Prabhu, miscast) is the daughter of Apsara Menaka and Rishi Vishwamitra. The animated backstop is provided, later a live action Menaka (Madhoo) makes an appearance too, dancing in Lord Indra's (Jisshu Sengupta) court.

Abandoned in the forest as an infant, she was raised by Rishi Kanva (Sachin Khedekar) in the kind of fantasy ashram where deer frolic with tigers and every frame stuffed with computer-generated flora and fauna.

When King Dushyant (Dev Mohan) arrives, he is called upon to battle with an Asura army (animated backstory added). He defeats them and stays on for some R&R in the ashram.

He falls in love with Shakuntala and has a Gandharva vivaah with her.

When he leaves, after gifting her his signet ring, promising to return, she is pregnant.

Lost in thought, she is cursed by the ill-tempered Rishi Durvasa (Mohan Babu), whose animated backstory is dutifully narrated, to be forgotten by the man she was dreaming about when she rudely ignored him.

Sent to be with her husband, she arrives at the capital -- full of gigantic statues -- decked up as a bride, and he does not remember her. She has lost the ring that would reveal the truth, so she is stoned and cast out by the people.

A fisherman finds the missing ring, Dushyant's memory is restored, but Shakuntala is nowhere to be found.

There are endless sequences of him staggering about in grief, a lengthy song in his imagination, yet another battle with the asuras, a flashback to show Shakuntala's trauma, by which time many viewers must be mentally begging for mercy.

So much effort has been put in by the tech team but there is no freshness to the look of the film. The same kitsch reaching the 3D screen in 2023, via oleographs, old movies, television and Amar Chitra comics.

Everything looks fake and garish.

The music is a drone, and though the lines (terrible dubbing) are written in Sanskritised Hindi (with a couple of slip-ups), they sound unintentionally funny.

The makers are calling Shaakuntalam 'Mythology For Millennials'. However, if the love story were to work in today's time, it would have reached the much-maligned millennials even if it was done with simplicity, elegance and imagination.

Here, the emotions are buried under the heavy weight of needless grandeur, which is not even aesthetically appealing.

It is repeated a few times that Shakuntala was born to fulfill a higher purpose, which turns out to be giving birth to Bharat (played by Allu Arha), so this film becomes a Mahabharat origin story.

If film-makers are going to dig into mythology or history to give audiences a large-scale viewing experience, let them also rework their storyboards.

Our cinema could do with more beauty and less tinsel.